This invention relates generally to controlling devices, for example, remote controls, and the features and functionality provided by such devices. Such controlling devices may be universal, i.e., adaptable to issue commands to a multiplicity of appliances of different manufacture and/or type; unified, i.e., adaptable to issue commands to a multiplicity of types of appliances of the same manufacture; and/or dedicated, i.e., adapted to issue commands to a specific device of specific type and manufacture.
A popular feature of such controlling devices is the ability to configure or program certain keys of the device to enable rapid access to a user's favorite content, e.g., TV channel, radio station, etc. To this end, various methods of configuring a controlling device to perform such functions have been proposed, for example U.S. Pat. No. 5,414,426 which describes a user-programmable favorite channel macro key, U.S. Pat. No. 7,193,661 which describes a system in which channel data may be downloaded from a set top box into a controlling device for future use in favorite channel selection, or U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/206,181 which describes a yet further method for acquiring favorite channel information from a set top box.
Methods of labeling favorite content keys, once programmed, have also been previously proposed in the art. Many involve the use of an LCD or similar display on the controlling device, for example as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/312,303. Others, for example as represented by the Philips SRU4105 product (see Philips SRU 4105/27 Owners Manual, (undated), Ledgewood, N.J. 07852) provide a sheet of channel logo stickers which may be pasted next to a macro key after a user has manually programmed a channel tuning sequence onto that key.
Yet further, methods for configuring a controlling device keypad via placement of moveable keycaps have been proposed, such as for example described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,579,002 wherein the command function performed by each button is encoded in the button itself, thereby permitting any arbitrary keypad layout to be constructed by a user.